We now know why Susan Rice requested to 'unmask' the names of Trump associates

Former national security adviser Susan Rice told the House
Intelligence Committee that she "unmasked" the names of President
Donald Trump's associates because she wanted to find out why the
crown prince of the United Arab Emirates visited Trump Tower in
New York last year without notifying the US government, CNN
reported on
Wednesday.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, UAE's crown prince,
traveled to New York during the transition period in
December 2016 and reportedly met with former national security
adviser Michael Flynn, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser
Jared Kushner, and former White House chief strategist Steve
Bannon.

According to CNN, the Obama administration
felt "misled" by the UAE, which was why Rice requested
that Trump associates' names be unmasked.

A senior Middle East official acknowledged to CNN that
the UAE did not inform the US of the crown prince's visit in
advance but denied that the UAE had misled the Obama
administration. The official said that the December Trump Tower
meeting was merely part of an effort to build a relationship with
the incoming administration.

The crown prince's trip to New York came shortly before the
UAE brokered a January 11 meeting between a Trump associate and a
Russian close to President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles
islands to create a back channel of communication between Trump
and Russia.

UAE officials reportedly facilitated the meeting in
the hopes of encouraging Russia to distance itself from Iran, a
major Kremlin ally. The Trump administration has often expressed
its skepticism of Iran, and Trump on the campaign trail
frequently derided the 2015 nuclear deal Iran reached with the US
and five world powers.

News of Rice's unmasking request first emerged in April,
when Bloomberg reported
that Rice had tried to learn the identities of several Trump
transition team members whose communications with foreign
officials were picked up as part of the US' routine
intelligence-gathering operations.

According to Bloomberg, documents showing that Rice made
the unmasking requests were uncovered by the National Security
Council's former senior director for intelligence, Ezra
Cohen-Watnick, who was fired by national security adviser
H.R. McMaster in July. Cohen-Watnick was
involved in providing documents related to the
incidental surveillance of members of Trump's transition team to
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes in
March.

House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. pauses
while meeting with reporters outside the White House in
Washington, Wednesday, March 22, 2017, following a meeting with
President Donald Trump.Pablo Martinez
Monsivais/AP

Although Nunes recused himself from his committee's
investigation, he subpoenaed the
National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI in May — without
telling his Democratic colleagues — for intelligence
documents containing details of any unmasking requests
made by Obama administration officials and the former CIA
director to learn the names of Trump associates who communicated
with foreign officials.

Trump and his allies have painted Rice's unmasking requests
as inappropriate and political in nature,
but Rice told NBC's Andrea
Mitchell in April that allegations she unmasked
Trump associates for political reasons were "absolutely
false."

Further, national security experts agree that Rice's
reported requests to identify which Trump associates were
speaking with foreign officials before he was inaugurated were
neither unusual nor against the law.

"The identities of US persons may be released under two
circumstances: 1) the identity is needed to make sense of the
intercept; 2) if a crime is involved in the conversation," Robert
Deitz, a former senior counselor to the CIA director and former
general counsel at the National Security Agency, told Business
Insider in an earlier interview.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee appear to
concur with that assessment.

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who is one of the lawmakers
spearheading the House investigation, told the Daily Caller
"nothing that came up in her interview that led me to
conclude" that she made inappropriate unmasking
requests.

"She was a good witness, answered all our questions," Rep.
Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who took over leading the
House Russia investigation after Nunes stepped down, told CNN.
"I'm not aware of any reason to bring her back."